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She brought her hand up to the edge of the bodice. “It’s very low-cut,” she said.
“But of course, my dear,” Marcelline said. “You have a beautiful bosom. We want to draw the eye to it.”
“I’ll feel naked,” Lady Gladys said.
“What’s wrong with that?” Lady Clara said. “You’ll feel naked and still look perfectly respectable.”
“Hardly perfectly respectable,” said her cousin.
“It’s all right to look tempting,” Lady Clara said.
“Will you stop it!” Lady Gladys snapped, her vehemence startling everybody. “Stop being kind. I can’t tell you how provoking it is. No, wait, yes I can. You’ve only to crook a finger to have any man you want. You have no idea what it’s like to be—to be—not to be beautiful and sweet-natured!”
“I’m not sweet at all,” Lady Clara said. “People only think that because of my looks.”
“That’s the point! You can say anything!”
“No, I can’t,” Lady Clara said sharply. “I can’t be myself. There’s Mama, looming over me all the time. You don’t know how suffocating it is.”
“Oh, yes, all those men crowding about you, clamoring for a smile.”
“They only see the outside. They don’t know who I am, or care particularly. You know me—or you ought to know. And you know I’m on your side and always have been, in spite of how difficult you make it.”
Lady Gladys went scarlet and her eyes filled. “I don’t know how to behave!” she cried. “I don’t know how to do anything! You complain because your mother is always at you. But at least you have one. You’ve had women about to teach you how to be womanly. Look at me! My father’s a soldier, and I might as well have been raised in an army camp. He treats me like a regiment. He gives orders and then off he goes, to smash some Foe of England.” She flung away and stormed back to the dressing room. “Jeffreys! Get this thing off me!”
With a panicked look at Leonie, Jeffreys trotted after her.
Lady Clara stomped to a chair and flung herself onto it.
Marcelline looked at Leonie.
Leonie lifted her shoulders and mouthed, I have no idea.
“What on earth is the matter?” Marcelline said to Lady Clara.
“I don’t know,” Lady Clara said.
“I can tell you what’s the matter,” Lady Gladys said from behind the curtain. “I’m not going to Almack’s tonight, no matter how they cajole. I told them I wouldn’t do that sort of thing ever again, yet Clara won’t stop plaguing me about it. And now you’ve given her this curst dress for ammunition!”
“You look very well in it, but you’re too obstinate to admit it!” Lady Clara cried.
“I don’t care if I look well. They should never have made it, because I’ll have no occasion to wear it. I don’t want it! I wish I’d never come to London!”
Lady Clara sighed, braced her forehead with one hand, and stared at the floor.
From behind the dressing room curtain came a choked sob.
Other than that, the consulting rooms were silent, apparently peaceful.
That was when Mary Parmenter came in, all flustered, to report that Lord Lisburne and Lord Swanton had arrived. They had business with Miss Noirot, they said. Should Mary ask them to wait in the showroom or in the office?
“We’re busy,” Leonie said. “You may tell them to make an appointment.”
She heard a gasp from behind the curtain. Then, “You can’t make Lord Swanton wait,” Lady Gladys called out shakily. “You’re not busy with me anymore. You might as well see what the gentlemen want.”
“Tell them to make an appointment,” Leonie told Parmenter.
Then she sent the others away and walked behind the curtain.
Leonie found Lady Gladys sitting on the edge of the dressmaking platform, head in her hands.
“I’m not talking to you,” her ladyship muttered. “You’re like a human thumbscrew.”
“One of the secrets of our success is knowing our ladies’ minds,” Leonie said. “We squeeze it out of you one way or another. You might as well tell me and save us both energy we can employ more happily elsewhere.”
“Happy!”
Leonie dropped onto the platform beside her.
Lady Gladys lifted her head. “You only pretend to be my friend. You only want me to order more clothes.”
“I haven’t got to pretending to be your friend yet,” Leonie said. “But I do want you to order more clothes. Why else be in business?”
“It hasn’t occurred to you that I might put you out of business? All of London knows you’ve taken me in hand. They’re already betting on the outcome.”
In truth, of all the matters that might be making Lady Gladys irrational, this hadn’t been the first to cross Leonie’s mind—probably because of the large mental distraction known as the Marquess of Lisburne.
Still, the betting didn’t surprise Leonie. Members of the ton, men and women alike, gambled, mainly because they were bored and idle. And whether they made bets or not, the women would be deeply interested in the results of Lady Gladys’s visits to the shop.
Leonie knew this. It was, in fact, part of what had propelled her toward Lady Gladys. Once Maison Noirot succeeded in showing her ladyship at her best, all the fashionable world would be pounding on Maison Noirot’s doors.
But her ladyship did have to cooperate.
“Aristocrats wager about everything,” Leonie said briskly. “Naturally, you find it galling—”
“Especially when Lady Bartham’s irritating daughter takes great pains to explain the terms,” Lady Gladys said. “As will not surprise you, the phrase ‘silk purse from sow’s ear’ came up more than once.”
Lady Bartham was a close friend and venomous social rival of Lady Clara’s mother, Lady Warford. Leonie didn’t understand why anybody would make friends—or having made them in ignorance, continue—with an adder. She was aware that one of Lady Bartham’s daughters, Lady Alda, was equally toxic.
“Some people are either so ignorant, self-centered, or deeply unhappy that hurting others makes them feel good,” Leonie said. “It’s perverse, but there it is. The best way to fight back is to find a reason to laugh or to feel pleased. It will confuse and upset them. A good revenge, I think.”
Lady Gladys scowled at her. “Tell me what’s amusing. Tell me what I ought to feel pleased about.”
“Why should she go to so much trouble to insult and hurt you unless she’s trying to undermine your self-confidence? Maybe she’s afraid you’ll turn into competition.”
Lady Gladys gave Leonie a you-need-medical-help look.
“Only imagine,” Leonie said, “if you had patted her hand reassuringly and said, ‘Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry to worry you, but I promise to try not to steal any of your beaux, if I can help it.’ Then you could laugh. You have such a pretty laugh. And she would go away a good deal more upset than you.”
“A pretty laugh?” Lady Gladys said. She turned away to stare at a French fashion print on the opposite wall.
“A beautiful voice altogether.” Leonie rose. “Please stop wishing to look like your cousin. It makes you blind to your own assets. You’ll never look like Lady Clara. But she’ll never have your voice.”
“That hardly makes us even!”
“The biggest army, even in the smartest uniforms, doesn’t always win the battle,” Leonie said. “Did his lordship your father never tell you that cleverness and luck come into it?”
Shortly thereafter
At this time of day, when ladies of fashion were dressing for the parade in Hyde Park, Lisburne had expected to find the shop relatively quiet. Otherwise he wouldn’t have let Swanton come with him. The shop was quiet enough. The showroom held a few shopgirls restoring order after their most recent customers. They were putting ribbons and trinkets in
to drawers, reorganizing display cases, straightening hats their clientele had tipped askew, and rearranging mannequins’ skirts. The only remaining customer was an elderly lady who couldn’t make up her mind among several shades of brown ribbon.
Swanton was pacing at one end of the showroom when the girl returned to inform them that they needed to make an appointment.
“They must be busy with an important client,” Lisburne told him. “Why don’t you toddle up to White’s? The club will be free of women, and you can compose your turbulent mind with the aid of a glass of wine or whiskey.”
Swanton had stopped pacing when the girl returned from her errand. Now he looked about him as though he’d forgotten where he was. “White’s,” he said.
“Yes. The young ladies can’t get to you there.”
“And you?”
